Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one’s own, of other people’s. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and...

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

Sólo cuando no esperamos nada ni albergamos ningún sueño podemos mantener el control de nuestra vida. Los sueños a menudo implican a los demás y es imposible tener la certeza de que los demás no...

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

Have you noticed,” she asked him, “how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips...

And I need you, my love,” he said. “I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to...

Why is it,” she asked, snuggling closer, “that I so often imagine myself running away and running free?

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don’t know where to look for it any longer. And I don’t know if I would recognize it if I found it....

The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one’s one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.

Perhaps today was all that mattered. Perhaps today was all anyone could expect. Perhaps tomorrow was always an illusion that never came.

One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest.

And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably...

La felicidad es siempre algo pasajero, fugaz. Nunca es un estado permanente para nadie aun que muchos perseveramos en creer la tonta idea de que si ocurriera esto o aquello seríamos felices el resto de...

Why do I want to run from happiness?

There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one’s life might turn. And almost inevitably they popped out at one without any warning at all, leaving one with no time...

Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its...

The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices,...

Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.

Future indifferences is no consolation for present pain.

The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

Adaptamos nuestra vida a las circunstancias y cogemos la felicidad donde la encontramos, aun cuando sólo sea en momentos pasajeros. O hacemos eso o nos perdemos la oportunidad de aceptar la gracia en nuestra vida....

He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language – happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean...

You really love me?” she asked wistfully.”The devil!” he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder. “Did I forget to say it? The thing I came to say?

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?

She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned...

If you are never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out...

Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been without thought? Without…integrity?How could she have felt like that without love?Was love essential?Did it even exist – the...

Tal vez las familias no siempre rechazan. Tal vez al menos a veces abren los brazos para acoger. Tal vez a veces se puede confiar en el amor.

la vida, de eso va, es un viaje, y es el valor y la energía para dar siempre el siguiente y el siguiente paso sin hacer juicios acerca de qué hicimos bien o en qué...

She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.

One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.

Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was...

This boy,” he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, “was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful...

Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm & smiles? Or like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory...

The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.

All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that...

Tenemos la costumbre, me parece, de creer que el amor es una de las emociones humanas más débiles. Pero no es débil en absoluto. Tal vez es la fuerza que discurre por todo y lo...

Love does not last forever, then?””He asked me the same thing this morning,” she said. “No, it does not – not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone...

And infatuated be damned. He was near to being blinded by his attraction to her. He was in love, damn it all. He disliked her, he resented her, he disapproved of almost everything about her,...

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

Tonight he would do anything in the world for her.Tomorrow he would begin to set her free.

It is stronge how smells can bring back vivid memories.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?

Families are wonderful institution,” he said. “I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge....

And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but …alive.

After a few awkward moments, Lizzy joined them and they skipped along the avenue, the three of them, laughing and whooping and altogether making an undignified spectacle of themselves.

But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.